OPED | Saturday, February 21, 2009 | Email | Print | 
Five hours’ drive to doom
Udayan Namboodiri
Taliban country is not just a politico-geographic space, but an organism moving fast to overwhelm India with terror, infiltration and economic ruin
The first sign that America's war against terrorism was going terribly wrong came soon after the fall of Kabul, in November 2001. Pakistan, never comfortable with the idea of losing its strategic depth, began pushing irregulars over the border into Afghanistan for hit and run operations. I was then covering foreign affairs for a national daily and reported the developments first. To cut a long story short, the news was met with disbelief.
Much the same reaction was seen after the news hit the world that the democratically elected government of Pakistan had practically signed away the Swat Valley to a bunch of people who were aptly described by US special envoy Richard Holbrooke as "murderers and thugs". On the following day, as if shake everybody into realising that it wasn’t just a bad dream, the Talib shot dead a Pakistani TV reporter in Matta town.
Today, to the world outside Pakistan, the situation is something like the elephant and the five blind men. Some people see it as a return of the era of gendercide, the targeted attack of women's basic human rights; others believe it is the beginning of the atomisation of Pakistan, proof enough of the basic hollowness of the very concept of a Pakistani nation. Yet others are spared no sleep by the vision of Pakistan's nuclear assets being controlled by unlettered fanatics who know only to kill. The variegated responses betray the specific concerns that the authors of each have about the Taliban. Saturday Special therefore features two eminent experts on the region, M. Rama Rao (Main Article) and Kanchan Lakshman (The Other Voice)
Pakistan had signed peace deals with fundamentalist forces after suffering losses in armed combat. Only last May the Islamabad establishment agreed to a gradual pull-out of troops from the Swat. But nobody had expected this. However, like all disasters, this too had been predicted. History, after all, is nothing put a pile-up of human bungles. The cynic in me says 'the fun has only begun'; but the deeper concern felt by all right-thinking people in India was best articulated by Arun Jaitley, the senior BJP' leader: "Taliban is now only a five -hour drive from India".
For those of us who have followed the US' war on terrorism almost on a daily basis, February 17 marked the end of Phase 1. It began with Richard Armitage summoning the head of Pakistani military intelligence, who happened to be in Washington at the time of 9/11, and threatening to bomb his country back to the stone age if it did not comply with America's orders. Eight years and five months later, Pakistan has indeed gone into the womb posture . American 'Drone' aircraft are bombing Pakistani villages in the north-west and killing Pakistani civilisans as so much 'collateral damages'. These things are déjà vu now. By the way, Afghanistan, whose salvation was the raison de etre, is already in the Paleolithic age. Some people like to call it a 'failed state', but quickly add that it’s only a metaphor.
What happened to India during Phase 1? Well, India too was singed. Terrorism continued unabated, but the world's largest democracy did quite well in macro-economic terms at least. Now, that Phase 2 has begun, expect more than just sparks from the fire that is raging next door. It doesn't take a doomsdayer to predict the following:
1. Expect more terrorism, this time with a focus on India's power grids, dams and railways. These are everyday things to us Indians, but the Pakistanis hate us for owning these things.
2. Expect refugees on the streets: As a small boy in 1971, I saw Pakistanis fighting each other for Indian aid khichuri in an open-air 'camp' in a marsh outside Calcutta which is today known as Salt Lake city. Of course, a war happened that December and those refugees became Bangladeshis. I get an eerie feeling that it won't be long before a civil war breaks out Punjab Pakistan leading to a skedaddle of unprecedented proportions. The Taliban will certainly not be complacent with just the north-west.
3. Expect population explosion in India: The United Nations anyway expects Pakistan to become the world's third most populous country by 2040. Without much of an economy to support them, and the Taliban exacerbating their misery, millions of Pakistanis would be forced to infiltrate into India. These would be the new infiltrators, because by then today's Bangladeshi illegal squatters would become legitimate citizens.
Resultantly, we would see the western slice of India afflicted with the same problem that devils the east and north-east now. India's own population would by then touch the 1.5 billion mark. Add to that the hundreds of millions from Pakistan who would elude Census officials by being forever on the move.
4. Expect big power rivalry in South Asia Major: The United States had invested heavily into diplomacy with the Central Asian republics in the hope that it would get bases from where it could keep its troops in Afghanistan supplied with material. Since 2001, Pakistan provided not only Karachi port, but also overland transportation rights to American military supplies. But the arrangement began to wobble after the growth of militancy in the north-west. The urgency for an alternative base or some bases in central Asia was enhanced when Taliban forces began attacking American convoys passing through the Khyber. American guns, ammunition, uniforms, food, vehicles, even United Nations humanitarian material began to fall into Taliban hands.
However, Russia, the regional big brother and former boss of the commissars who rule in Bishkek, Tashkent, etc. ,had no intention of facilitating a resolution to America’s problem. So, Moscow began investing double into diplomacy to ensure that America is denied these bases. On Thursday came the news that Krgystan has decided not to renew its lease for the Manas air field.
This was met with shattering shock in western capitals, even though London's Independent had predicted it only last month through a news story that said Moscow was paying Central Asian governments up to $ 2 billion for each denied air base. Interestingly, all this, including the Swat Valley deal, happened in the very week that Russian observed the 20th anniversary of the pullout of the Red Army from Afghanistan. The ironies of history can sometimes resemble sick jokes.
Unless India reshapes its foreign policy to adopt a more proactive one, our hapless citizens would be left holding the baby. All the strategic economic decisions being taken and implemented right now would become meaningless when India becomes indistinguishable from the larger South Asian mess.
The problem with the Congress party's foreign affairs think tankers –– who, given the present political outlook seem certain to dominate for at least five more years –– is that too often day-dreamers take the upper hand. The crisis that afflicts Pakistan today should not be seen as just an internal affair of Pakistan. India must recognise that the Talibanisation of Pakistan is already happening and once Islamabad itself is headed by a mullah, the very existence of India will be threatened.
-- The writer is Senior Editor, The Pioneer
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